The Animal Biology

Bìol. Tvarin. 2020; 22(1): 31–35.
https://doi.org/10.15407/animbiol22.01.031
Received 19.10.2019 ▪ Accepted 24.03.2020 ▪ Published online 01.05.2020

New approaches to the analysis on epizootic situation of rabies in Ukraine

National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine,
16 Polkovnyka Potyekhina str., Kyiv, 03041, Ukraine, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

The priorities of study the epizootic process of any zoonoses should conduct the analysis using new approaches and technologies in developed countries of the world. Since geographic information systems (GIS) are a tool for collecting data from many sources by various methods that, unlike to standard mapping, can organize, store, retrieve, analyze, model, present spatial data and generate forecasts, our goal was to analyze the epizootic situation of rabies in Ukraine using geo-information technologies. To achieve this goal, we needed to collect rabies incidence data, determine the longitude and latitude of geographic coordinates for each case, create a database of all rabies cases and adapt it to run QGIS software. GIS was used for dynamic models in which the spatial distribution of rabies cases for different animal species varied over successive time frames. The use of GIS, unlike classical mapping, allowed the establishment of the epizootic movement directions, species geolocation, dynamic visualization, seasonality dependence, and the identification of the areas with the highest and lowest degree of infected depending not only on the region, but also within the species of each district. In this case, the determination of the epizootic, movement directions showed a move in the east direction for the domestic animals and in the west direction for the wild animals. Identification of the areas with the highest and lowest infected of rabies made it possible to establish that the highest the concentration of rabies cases among wild animals were observed in the Khmelnytskyi and Vinnytsia regions and the lowest was in the Poltava region. Among domestic animals, the highest incidence of rabies occurred in the north-eastern part of the Vinnytsia region, especially on the border with the Kyiv region, as well as in the northeastern part of the Cherkasy and Kirovograd regions, and the lowest in the territory of the Transcarpathian and southern parts of the Odesa region. Thus, the establishment of zones of greatest infected with rabies, understanding the periods of ups and downs of epizootics, the establishment of species the specificity of each region will provide qualitative and effective planning and carrying out control measures in the territory of all regions of Ukraine.

Key words: rabies, geoinformation technologies, epizooty, database, GIS analysis, visualization

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